Posts

May 22, 2013

+

3:45 PM | FYI: Could Climate Change Cause More (And Bigger) Tornadoes?

Twister OAR/ERL/National Severe Storms Laboratory (NSSL) A warming world pulls the two factors of tornado formation in opposite directions. Scientists generally agree that climate change will increase the likelihood of extreme weather events, but the jury is still out on how tornadoes will fare in a warming world. Tornadoes are fickle beasts, and it remains tough to predict a tornado a week from now, much less what they might be like over the next few years. "The most common finding is a […]

May 21, 2013

+

8:00 PM | Climate Change Will Increase Heat-Related Deaths In NYC, Study Says

New York City Heat Aurelien Guichard via Wikimedia Commons Summer in the city could get a whole lot more miserable in the coming decades, according to a new report. Warming weather could make summer in the city deadly in the next few decades, according to a study published this week in Nature Climate Change. By the 2020s, New York City will see 22 percent more heat-related deaths per year compared with 1980s, the researchers predicted. Urban centers like New York City are especially sensitive […]

May 17, 2013

+

4:30 PM | Mapping The Simpsons' Slow Descent Into Suckitude

The Simpsons' Popularity Over Time Andrew Clark Plus: how other shows fare over time Who can predict how a TV show will fare two or three seasons out? Some shows only gain momentum after a dull first season, while others break out of the pack early on only to flounder or manage to remain consistently awesome. Andrew Clark of PremierSoccerStats created these handy scatterplots of that process using data originally culled from the Global Episode Opinion Survey (GEOS), a web-based survey […]

+

2:01 PM | This Bacterium Can Do Division, Compute Logarithms And Take Square Roots

Bacterial Calculation Ramiz Daniel, Jacob R. Rubens, Rahul Sarpeshkar, Timothy K. Lu via MIT MIT researchers engineered bacterial cells to function as living calculators. A group of engineers from MIT have created analog calculators out of living cells, according to a paper published online in Nature yesterday. By tweaking the genes of bacterial cells, the researchers were able to create circuits that can perform calculations--including division, multiplication, logarithms and square roots--in […]

+

12:51 PM | Giving White People The Illusion Of Darker Skin Makes Them Less Racist

Illusions And Biases Dreamstime A change of skin tone can bring a change of heart, apparently. An optical illusion can change the implicit biases of Caucasian people against people with darker skin, according to a study published in the August 2013 edition of Cognition. The research, a collaboration between Royal Holloway University of London, the Central European University in Budapest and Radboud University Nijmegen in the Netherlands, analyzed the implicit racial biases of 34 Caucasian […]

May 16, 2013

+

7:30 PM | A Guide To Not Saying Dumb Things About Angelina Jolie's Double Mastectomy

Angelina Jolie Gage Skidmore via Wikimedia Commons A refresher in genetic mutations, breast cancer risk and the perils of overawareness Angelina Jolie's announcement in Tuesday's New York Times that she has undergone a preventative double mastectomy to reduce her risk of breast cancer as a carrier of a BRCA gene mutation has garnered praise, sparked debates over genetic testing, and of course, encouraged people to say stupid things on Twitter. But what does the science say? How does Jolie's […]

May 14, 2013

+

8:30 PM | Was the 2013 World Press Photo Of The Year A Fake?

Fake Photo Controversy This image, which won the 2013 World Press Photo of the Year contest, has come under fire for being digitally manipulated. Paul Hansen / World Press Photo Forensic image analysis relaunches the controversy. In February, the winner of the prestigious World Press Photo of the Year award came under fire after allegations surfaced that it had been significantly altered. The organization has stood by the photo, but a forensic image analyst, Neal Krawetz, now claims his […]

+

7:30 PM | A Cannabinoid That Looks Like THC Could Be Key To Diagnosing PTSD

PTSD Brain Positron emission tomography scans of the brain of a patient from the PTSD group, the trauma control group and the healthy control group. The brightness of the image corresponds to the level of CB1 receptors. Courtesy Alexander Neumeister Researchers have pinpointed a set of biological markers that could help diagnose PTSD--and, eventually, treat it. A molecular imaging study has pinpointed a set of biological markers that could help diagnose post-traumatic stress disorder more […]

May 13, 2013

+

5:45 PM | How Facebook Used Science To Design More Emotional Emoticons

Surprise Matt Jones / Facebook With the help of a psychology professor and a Pixar illustrator, Facebook is trying to make our messages a little more emotional. In 1872, Charles Darwin published The Expression of the Emotions in Man and Animals, a book that cataloged emotional expressions in humans and their link to the animal world. In the book, Darwin described more than 50 universal emotions. Now Facebook, with the help of a psychologist who studies emotions and a Pixar illustrator, has […]

May 10, 2013

+

2:30 PM | Women Don't Like Hearing Other Women Complain About Their Bodies

Don't Talk About How Fat These Make You Feel Dreamstime "OMG I'm so fat" is just as annoying as you thought it was. Women who talk about eating, exercise or their bodies in a negative way--what researchers call "fat talk"--are less well-liked than those who say positive things about their bodies, according to a study presented at the Midwestern Psychological Association's annual meeting last week in Chicago. "Though it has become a regular part of everyday conversation, 'fat talk' is far […]

May 09, 2013

+

7:00 PM | Watch The Ring Of Fire Eclipse Starting At 5:30 P.M. EST

Ring of Fire Wikimedia Commons For those outside the southern hemisphere, a livestream will show it in its fiery glory (without the risk of eye damage). Stargazers in parts of Australia will get to witness a dramatic "ring of fire" solar eclipse later today. For anyone else who isn't hanging out down under, SLOOH, a robotic telescope service, will have a livestream of the eclipse here. An annular solar eclipse happens when the Moon passes in front of the sun but doesn't cover it completely, […]

+

5:00 PM | Time-Lapse GIFs Show Earth Transform Over 25 Years

Satellite images from every year since 1984 show the march of human progress-and the retreat of nature. Starting in the 1980s, Alaska's Columbia Glacier began retreating, shrinking from 41 miles long (its originally documented length in 1794) to 36 miles long in 1995. This is what that change actually looks like from space. The images are part of the Timelapse project from Google and TIME, what Google calls "the most comprehensive picture of our changing planet ever made available to the […]

May 08, 2013

+

2:00 PM | The LHC Might Have Created The Smallest Drop Of Liquid Ever

CMS The Compact Muon Solenoid, one of the two large particle physics detectors on the Large Hadron Collider at CERN. CERN A tiny drop could have big implications for our understanding of particle collisions. Over the past few months, the Large Hadron Collider has been ramming protons and lead ions together in the Compact Muon Solenoid (CMS), one of its particle detectors. After each collision, some of the newly produced particles zoom away together like a school of fish, in a scientific puzzle […]

May 07, 2013

+

9:00 PM | What Middle-Aged Men Are Watching On YouTube In Your City [Infographic]

Viral Video We're sharing a lot of True Blood trailers. YouTube Trends One nation, under True Blood. What are middle-aged men watching on YouTube in your city? With the new YouTube Trends Map, you can now check out what videos are going viral in real-time in different regions of the U.S., filtering by gender, age, and shares versus views. Strictly based on views, most of the country seems to be watching the relatively boring "Belen vs St. Thomas Water Polo Handshake," while a select few […]

+

7:45 PM | Vaccine Halts Heroin Addiction In Rats

Drugs Against Drugs National Cancer Institute (NCI) The treatment is now ready for human trials. A vaccine to treat heroin addiction has proven effective in keeping drug-addicted rats from relapsing in a preclinical trial, according to a study published this week in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. Researchers from the Scripps Research Institute in California say the vaccine is now ready for human trials. Initial research into the vaccine in 2011 found that it could […]

May 02, 2013

+

8:29 PM | OpenWorm Is An Open-Source Virtual Worm, Accurate In Every Way

Elegant Elegans The OpenWorm 3D Browser iPhone app lets you peek into C. elegans at the cellular level. MetaCell, LLCAn international programming project aims to create virtual nematode life. Predictive models are essential in engineering fields, but less common in biology, though accurate simulations of living organisms could help us understand disease, drug efficacy and neuroscience. OpenWorm, a new open-source project devoted to creating a complete virtual model of a worm, aims to bring […]

+

6:30 PM | Ladies, Are You Smearing Toxic Metals On Your Lips Every Day?

Metal Mouth jerine via FlickrA new study finds potentially harmful levels of heavy metals in commonly used lipsticks and glosses. A new study from the University of California, Berkeley and the Oakland, Calif.-based nonprofit Asian Communities for Reproductive Justice might make us rethink sexy red lips. According to the paper published online today in Environmental Health Perspectives, many lipsticks actually contain toxic metals. Since the 1990s, reports of lead traces in lipsticks have […]

April 25, 2013

+

8:59 PM | The White House's Latest Drug Policy Plan Is Actually Based On Science

Obama Loves Science President Obama at the 2012 White House Science Fair YouTubeAmerica's drug czar has announced that the nation's drug policy should be governed by neuroscience, not politics. In the U.S., how the government approaches drugs has very little to do with science. The War on Drugs has put the focus on incarceration and enforcement, not on the public health aspects of addiction. We classify drugs based on politics, rather than their actual risk, and inhibit further research that […]

+

4:31 PM | Broadcast Your Drunken Data To The World With A Smartphone Breathalyzer

BACtrack Mobile Breathalyzer ThinkGeekBecause what the world really needed was another way to post pictures of your inebriated tomfoolery. Whether you're in a contest with your buddies over who's the drunkest, or legitimately trying to determine whether your blood alcohol content is low enough to drive home (just take a cab, dude), personal breathalyzers can be pretty fun to whip out at a bar, at least for those of us obsessed with numbers. But perhaps it's not enough of a social experience for […]

April 24, 2013

+

1:01 PM | We've Finally Figured Out What Makes LED Bulbs So Inefficient

An LED Mystery Researchers measured the energy spectrum of electrons emitted by an LED and found that the signature of energetic electrons matched those produced by the Auger process. École Polytechnique, Ph. LavialleNow maybe LED lighting will take off in more than just traffic lights and gadgets. LEDs should be lighting the way to a greener future: They use 75 percent less energy and last 25 times longer than incandescent light bulbs, and they do so at a cooler temperature. But right now, we […]

April 23, 2013

+

6:30 PM | Rich People Aren't Entirely Awful And Selfish: Study

Money Man 401(K) 2013 via FlickrBusiness majors who admitted they'd jump at the chance to take a $2 million insider trading tip still were willing to stop and help a victim in need. Investment bankers raking in the dough on Wall Street may get a bad rap for being selfish, but a desire to make boatloads of money won't automatically turn you into Scrooge McDuck, according to new research. A study published in the April issue of the Journal of Applied Social Psychology found that many people […]

April 22, 2013

+

2:30 PM | FYI: Is Ecstasy Safer When It's Purer?

Ecstasy DEAIs pure MDMA "absolutely" safe, as a Canadian health official claimed last year? Last summer, British Columbia's top health official caused an uproar when he called the risks of MDMA -- the synthetic amphetamine sold as ecstasy -- overblown. According to CBC News: Provincial Health Officer Dr. Perry Kendall says while the pure form of the drug has been proven safe in controlled clinical trials by psychiatrists, the type of ecstasy sold on the street is laced with potentially […]

April 19, 2013

+

3:00 PM | Just Seeing Hillary Clinton's Face Improves Women's Public Speaking

Encouraging Hillary Lawrence JacksonA new study finds women give longer and more confident political speeches when they are exposed to images of female role models. What do women in politics need? Strong female role models. A new paper in the May issue of the Journal of Experimental Social Psychology suggests that even just seeing images of female role models can help women speak publicly and perform as leaders. Previous research has found that the presence of female leaders in government has […]

April 18, 2013

+

7:00 PM | New App Tells Icelanders If Their Hookup Qualifies As Accidental Incest

Don't Kiss Strangers In Iceland Wikimedia CommonsIn a small country, you've got to be careful about keeping it in the family. The world can seem like a mighty small place, but nowhere more so than in Iceland, a country of 320,000 people where getting it on with a relative isn't even a question--the question is, how distantly? Thanks to a new app that warns users if they're too closely related, Icelandic daters can now go to bed feeling a little more assured that they won't eventually run into […]

+

6:00 PM | Why It's So Hard For Scientists To Study Medical Marijuana

Marijuana Madness DreamstimeThe nation's research-grade cannabis is controlled by the National Institute on Drug Abuse, whose mission to curb use is at odds with that of researchers looking to study pot's therapeutic properties. Eighteen states (plus the District of Columbia) allow cannabis use for certain medical conditions. Despite that, scientists have a harder time doing research on the potential medical benefits of marijuana than they do on "harder" drugs like ecstasy or magic mushrooms. […]

April 17, 2013

+

2:33 PM | Why We Stand Where We Do In An Elevator

Step On In Steve Snodgrass via FlickrElevator riders tend to arrange themselves into mini social hierarchies. Rebekah Rousi, a Ph.D. student in cognitive science, conducted an ethnographic study of elevator behavior in two of the tallest office buildings in Adelaide, Australia. After taking a total of 30 elevator rides in the two buildings, she discovered there was an established order to where people tended stand. "More senior men in particular seemed to direct themselves towards the back of […]

April 16, 2013

+

6:30 PM | Zap Away Would-Be Attackers With This 3800kv Anti-Rape Bra

Anti-Rape Bra SHE via BBCFeeling unsafe? Switch on your protective lingerie. In the wake of a highly publicized series of brutal rapes in India, a group of engineering students devised a way to help women deter sexual assault: Make their underwear a weapon. Manisha Mohan, a 20-year-old student at SRM University in Chennai, developed an undergarment called the "Society Harnessing Equipment," or SHE, with two of her friends in response to the December gang rape of a 23-year-old student in Delhi. […]

+

6:00 PM | Why Doctors Can't Give You LSD (But Maybe They Should)

Tripping On Science DreamstimeFor the first time since the 1970s, researchers are being allowed to study the potential medical properties of the most tightly controlled substances around. But it's not easy. When David Nichols earned a Ph.D in medicinal chemistry from the University of Iowa in 1973 by studying psychedelics, he thought he would continue studying hallucinogens indefinitely. "I thought I would work on it for the rest of my life," he says. His timing was less than fortuitous. In […]

April 15, 2013

+

2:31 PM | The Science Of PSAs: Do Anti-Drug Ads Keep Kids Off Drugs?

Drug Free Is The Way To Be Above The Influence The U.S. has been pouring millions of dollars into anti-drug campaigns since the 1980s. Has it done any good? From Reefer Madness to Nancy Reagan's famous "Just Say No," we're constantly trying to convince kids that drugs aren't as fun as they think they are. The Office of National Drug Control Policy, established in 1988, runs the National Youth Anti-Drug Media Campaign, a propaganda machine created to stop kids from using drugs and the money […]

April 11, 2013

+

7:30 PM | Long-Necked Giant Was Fastest-Growing Dinosaur

Lufengosaurus Wikimedia CommonsThe Lufengosaurus grew like a 30-foot weed. During the Jurassic Period, nearly 200 million years ago, a dinosaur called Lufengosaurus roamed what is now the Yunnan Province in southern China. The long-necked plant eater was the biggest guy around at the time, at almost 30 feet long, and new research suggests it grew faster than all other known dinosaurs and living birds. Because, as you might imagine, the fossilized embryos of dinosaurs are somewhat difficult to […]